


A Day in the Life

by Quetzalcoatl



Category: Original Work
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-03-17
Updated: 2011-03-17
Packaged: 2017-10-17 01:22:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,613
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/171451
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Quetzalcoatl/pseuds/Quetzalcoatl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Our narrator wakes up hungry and goes out after a bite.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Day in the Life

I rolled over disoriented; was that the floor or the ceiling? Hard to tell; the decrepit warehouse didn’t give much for décor, and everything was the same soiled beige. It was… where was the moon? Or the clock, that’s right, the clock… 2:13 AM, Wednesday. Or maybe Tuesday, or Thursday; I’d lost track some time ago. I’d overslept a bit- sure to be slim pickings by now, but sometimes it just grates you to the bone, that horrible _hunger_. It just plucks at you, shreds your stomach until you just can’t fight the fatigue. An old flame’s words licked at the edges of my mind, one of the endless pleas lodged in those far recesses. _You need to sleep more, babe. And eat. You look half dead_. Fighting off a smile and a croaking chortle I stood, studying the skeletal face in the thin pale reflection where the glass window escaped the cloudy frost. I looked the part, that’s for sure: greying, weathered skin bare in patches; my hollow cheeks a stretch of stringy sinuous flesh with the occasional mat of dingy hair; its loose folds drooping sadly from my high jutting cheekbones. My eyes were round and red and watery, a vivid oily green on dim white. My nose was a mess of splintered bone and pulpy ridged flesh, my forehead bare and bleeding from the numerous tears and gashes- brutal reminders of my place in the world. When had I broken my nose? Shrugging and pulling my scratchy threadbare coat about my pointed shoulders, I kicked the door open to embrace the heady night air. “Good night,” I whispered to no one, my voice a spectre on the dark breeze.  
I recalled my limp in anguish as I sauntered down the street, wide expressionless eyes hazily scanning the dismal horizon. I stumbled along with a shambling sway, the heavy thud of my near-useless left limb a dead give-away as I made my dismal search for tonight’s victim. It wasn’t that I liked doing it; I didn’t get any sort of perverse pleasure in surviving off the peril of others. But they say desperate times call for desperate measures, and they’re not far wrong. At least I tend to go for the real scumbags, the rapists and the murders, the corrupted- they deserve it, much more than the others. I shuffled down the choking deserted streets, all the same, a monotonous blur of loneliness and famine. I barely remember spotting him before the urge took over- some big thick lummox, violating a sniveling girl under the cover of a soiled alley. At first glance he threatened; bellowed until the moonbeam told me true and his expression turned from terror to tremor. I muttered sourly to myself as I left them rotting in the dank dark dumpster, licking the bits of flesh and blood and brain- a vile pudding- from my spidery fingers. I hadn’t meant to kill her, but she’d looked so appetizing, sticky with the sweet metallic tang of blood above and below, choked and starved and wanting of mercy. Or so I told myself, to calm the demons wrapped round my skull. It was mercy. That was all. Well, at least the worst was over, my Hollywood hunt exhausted for the night. I was free to live, so long as I steered clear of the zealots and the head-hunters.  
An hour found me on the other side of town, rambling along desolate roads with the cats and rats for company. My dragging gait brought me in slow and cumbersome, but it brought me in all the same- here, in the heart of the QC, an ancient, rusted, but wonderfully functional arcade. Alone I plucked and played at squeaky joysticks and filth-encrusted buttons, lost in the stench of grease and sweat and the other faint scents of adolescent sloth. But the hall ran deep and desolate and it ran deserted, a dull rainbow haze desperately clawing at the encroaching gloom. Like a prismatic beast it squelched and flashed, sharp sad beeps and blips piercing the night. Occasionally a high score trumpeted into the still, a raucous metallic chortle rising above the moan and rattle of the alleys. The arcade was hollowed despite its attempts however, its locals- no, its occupants as they were- having long lost their soft fleshy vigor. Instead of squinting eyes and pimply fat jowls gibbering and slobbering at me I found dark curdled stares, slack creaking jaws, and emaciated accusations. I started as a hard chill closed around my wrist; looking down I found it to be the press of small frigid fingers, covered in a stickiness not entirely foreign to such young hands. _Sorry_ , I thought as I brushed a wisp of webbish hair from the waning childish cheek. _I’m not a hero; I’m more and more the monster every day. I can’t save you little one._ The orphans were more and more common since it happened, turned out on the street like so many rats to huddle around rotting bins, fishing for crumbs in the blighted parks. I hefted him up to the paddles, galled at his feathery weight and the looseness of his transparent skin. It wasn’t much, but a moment’s relief, a garish chance to relinquish the pains of existence in this world- well, it was a coin well spent. Strained as it was, the laughter it bought was a most rare and precious purchase. Setting the squirming rat down to skitter away I scratched at my arm, skin wafting to the floor like pallid snowflakes. Food, play… it eased, but it never satisfied. I lumbered out into the street again, in search of the one thing craved but couldn’t capture.  
My father, rest his shade, would have been livid had he seen the way I hobbled down the slick pavement, eyes downcast in bleak stormy submission. _Chin up boy, you got to keep a stiff shoulder and a sharp eye_. A military man he’d been, all dangerous edges and stolid glares with a jaw that never creased. Efficient man, brutal but swift; thought he’d sired a replacement, a soldier ant to carry on the name. To his chagrin, he got a drone and a rogue drone at that, unwilling to bend to the dreary domestic ripple of the mundane. This ant’s got wings, I’d tell myself. And I wasn’t just going to soar, or scrape the heavens, no; I was going to break them. Call me a waste of space, call me a hopeless fanatic, but I was going to make them see, not with those fetid orbs but with something else, something tangential to sense and reason, some soft strong perception beyond the self. Father nearly boiled his fleshes when I told him, told him how I would never deign submit myself to the mindless farce of armed service but were to embark on a far more hazardous imperative. I could yet hear the tinge of contempt flaring the ends of his words, smell the anger-sweat, feel the brutish muggy breath swirling from his nostrils as he rammed my skull against the baseboard. _College? School!? The army will pave your way into a proper profession like they did me, to serve this great land, and you just want to throw that all away? Philosophy? Philosophy is for queers, and I’ll be damned if any son of mine is going to be a queer._ He cuffed me then, again and again about the temples until I felt the clinging red warmth burning my eyes and swarming the folds in my pained face, dribbling down my neck and ears. I remember so vividly, the acrid smell and the way his face twisted as I smiled, that sordid masochistic grin I’d give a million times again. _Oh, father, haven’t you met my boyfriend?_  
Reality jarred into me as a rock set itself firmly in my path, launching me into a helpless puddle and reminding me of what I was. Worse than vermin, I was feed for the scuttling packs. My shin scraped heavily against the grainy ground but I righted myself once more, and through a burst of sawdust and grime anchored myself- no, more as if I mired myself in the reeking haven. A single barkeep eyed me warily, pursuing his lips under a squirming mass of ragged, spindly hair, a thick caterpillar perched upon his face. It twitched when I nodded, shrank when I plopped myself down on the cracking, peeling cushion. “I don’t want no trouble, you crazy git,” he grunted. The caterpillar bustled. “You make my customers nervous. What’s left of them, that is. Figure they’dve locked you up by now, you sorry excuse for a menace. You can order seeing as I’m desperate, but then you leave. I’m serious. Take a hike, nutcase.” He backed on his heels as I leaned, his unease creeping slowly across his face, setting the caterpillar to a nervous dance. I never spoke, but rather nodded at the tap, pointed to a packet of assuredly stale nuts, and slid more than an appropriate payment across the table. The barkeep huffed as he grabbed up the coins to hoard them away like some great hairy squirrel, grubby paws scrabbling wildly over the bar as he fetched my desires and distanced himself. Ironic, in that act he took away the only thing I really felt the need to ask for. Picking idly at the scaly mass of stains and scabbed lacquer I tilted my head at the nearest shying patron. Quaffing my fiery prize, I tossed the packet into the midst and watched them scatter, greasy hardened cockroaches all. _What’s a guy got to do to get a little understanding around here? We’ve all suffered; it should bind us together, not tear us apart._ I grinned fiendishly at the glaring squirrel as I stood, my joints a chorus of creaks and groans. With a flick of departure, I sauntered into the muggy black.  
 _Come in dear, you’ll catch a death in all that rain!_ I remember her smell, warm and bright and everything of home. As austere as my father was, my mother was a beacon, a flare of color against the greyscale. It was she who finally pushed me through as she always had, stuffed the last careful sandwich into the knapsack before shoving me out the door. They arranged themselves so cautiously about the door: father fuming darkly from the frame; sister and Jo whimpering from the doorstep; mother and Kellie waving in the taxi’s wake, tears poorly concealed behind pale fingers. Even then I knew I’d never see them again, farewells were final and the world was waiting. University was a ramble, a melancholy fling- despite my search for something beyond, some dazzling rush of enlightenment; I was left unfulfilled and groping blindly for a nonexistent truth. The rest was an uninspiring affair- a bare graduation, a joyless job, the occasional empty relationship to quell the loneliness. But that always came back in the end, to my dismay- almost as if I found myself different, free and exempt from the laws of life.  
It cycled viciously; friends and lovers swirling about the soul, clouding the longing. And yet they always cleared, leaving me hollow and as deserted as the city park. It was languished and dismal, and its pungent squalor penetrated my reverie. I stared into the bleak for a few moments from a rotting bench, starting as a ghost shimmered into existence between the scarecrow trees. I nearly burst into laughter as the sniffling silhouette took a familiar form, and I only grimaced slightly as its tiny fingers wound their way innocently into my clayish grip. “Silly mouse, let’s take you back into the city. Did you follow me all the way from the arcade? That’s a long walk for such little legs.” The child giggled sheepishly, allowing himself to be tugged along towards the nearest center. He’d be secure once beyond the containment limits, but to get him there would be a hazardous dash. Damn the husks of the heart that once thumped so vitally in my chest, but I had to get him out of here. He didn’t deserve this life, didn’t earn it like we had, never paid in his time, his ignorance and sloth. We had to move quickly; we had to slide through the shift switch or we didn’t stand a chance.  
Skimming the grimy backstreets, our fleeting footfalls marked a hurried cadence but raised no alarm. Our escape continued unhindered until we breached the first layer, the innermost line of defense the QC had to offer. The fortification, however, was not to keep disaster out rather than in; this was the aptly titled Quarantine City, the root of the incident and thus, to forcibly unknowing civilians, the source of a looming epidemic. Our timing was sure by the starlight, and we slipped unchecked past the sleep-entranced delta control- or as we called it, the rookie regiment. The city defense was a series of concentric rings, each manned by a foot patrol and secured by heavily barricaded gates. Alpha, beta, gamma and delta they were- the barriers that locked us in tight, isolated us from the healthy population. Gamma and beta were a nervous squeeze but otherwise uneventful, and we floated to a tense pause as I peered over a short scraggly hedge and into the beast. Alpha control towered here, the greatest obstacle. We called it the Coroner- if her soldiers didn’t incinerate you outright they’d bury you at her feet. We could smell the sulphur and smoke as we huddled behind one last row of verdant sentinels. They stood sombre, one last guardian to shelter us before we charged the fray. Drawing a rattling breath, I felt aflame with the taste of freedom which lingered just beyond that last gate. The biohazard barriers were splayed across the horizon, row upon row of giant hornets, stingers cocked and balanced precariously on the thin ledges. I pulled the child close, wavering voice croaking into his upturned ear. “Remember, it’s a race! Run as fast as you can, and don’t turn around or I win!” Mere seconds awaited our flight, and my breath hardened in my throat as I tossed him through, screaming him ever faster over the deadly staccato. I watched with delight, with absolute hunger as the distance between us increased. I barely felt it as the first drone bore my skull open, grip still dripping with gore as he hammered his boot into my spine, flipping me with disdain, belly-up like a strung fish. I wriggled slightly, just enough to let me glance the inverted world one last time- there, I saw it, saw that frail hand encased in a heavy glove, heard the distant cooing of some matronly officer.  
Now, I don’t really mind these few timeless moments as I lay here prone, the dirt pervading my nostrils and mouth with a natural essence- an earthly truth. I welcome it, welcome the sweet certainty. I barely hear the buzz, hear the goon’s garish guffaw as his big toe digs out a holding in my ribs; I don’t feel the sting of his jabs nor smell the fear-sweat of his quavering trainee as he eases the barrel between my jaws. I close my eyes and wait for it, thrilled in the fresh clean breeze brushing my lifeless brow. I hear his voice, thick and garbled, malevolent like some great toothy lizard’s hiss. “See this, troop? Shot to the head, that’s the only way to do ‘em right. Teach you to eat brains, you filthy animal! Watch now, this here’s how you kill a zombie!”


End file.
